ROCHELLE – Anyone looking for a family-friendly scare this Halloween, look no further than Fourth Avenue in Rochelle.
For the first time ever, the Haunted House located at 1021 4th Avenue, put on by the Hansen family, will be partnering with the Vince Carney Community Theater to bring the community an unforgettable Halloween trick-or-treat experience.
The display on Fourth Avenue began with a single Halloween decoration and has continued to grow every year since.
“Our family started getting creative with Halloween more than 10 years ago with a single old locker in our front porch with a skeleton in it,” said Karl Hansen, resident of the home. “From there, we added a graveyard that got larger ever year and we started adding animatronics and our own creative touches.”
Eventually the display became so large they had to have trails in their lawn in order to display the ever-growing collection. Last year the home had three trails that included a visit to the Road Kill Café, an area 1021 paranormal investigation center, spider central and the graveyard.

This year the house will feature the trails through the yard filled with many Halloween surprises, spooky “live” projected scenes in the windows, and unique lighting effects on display. The house will be open to visit the entire week of Halloween, but the trails, animations and other surprises will only be open during trick-or-treating hours from 5 to 8 p.m. on Oct. 31.
“During the scheduled trick-or-treat time, many animated ghouls come to life and who knows what other surprises may be hiding in our peaceful gardens,” added Hansen.
There will also be a donation box available onsite collecting money for the Vince Carney Community Theater, who will be generously helping set up and providing some spooky surprises among the trails.
While this haunted house is meant to be scary, it also aims to be family-friendly and enjoyable for people of any age. They try to keep the scenes spooky, but child friendly by minimizing the blood and gore and focusing on other creative ways to make the house worth visiting.
“Our goal is to provide a safe fun place for the community to enjoy an interactive scare. Our yard is our canvas and Halloween in our art,” said Hansen.
The Hansen’s encourage both children and adults to visit on Halloween night to have some fun while helping VCCT in return.